The mothership/drone relationship is something that we've postulated here, even if the mothership is only that in the sense of having cooperative drones flanking the manned aircraft.
I'm glad to see that has been part of the plan.
Hopefuly, some means to offset the possibility of low dollar 'drone nets' as air defense, ones which could anticipate the trajectory of incoming planes and swarm to destroy or disable those aircraft are also being considered.
Think of a drone light show type swarm, that wound converge on the most likely flight path of an incoming plane and FOD the engines, for example, make that autonomous with AI and data feeds to track incoming aircraft by any means from radar to thermal, sound, or even just air disturbances.
The next step will be some sort of shields that can repel such. (Think Star Trek).
